on track because he was doubting
his set-up and Tony was winning
week after week and had a really
good start to the season, whereas
Jeffrey didn’t. He hardly cracked the
top 10 and that was, for him,
mentally pretty hard to take. Luckily
we could turn him around with a lot
of testing; we made a different bike
set-up for him compared to Tony.”
When he says different he doesn’t
mean slightly different, he means
completely different. Having ridden
Tony’s smoothy first, Jeffrey’s was a
shock. The biggest difference and
the most notable was the engine; it
was like a switch. On for go, off to
stop! It was hard-hitting and it was
instant. It was the kind of power
that wanted to rip your arms out of
their sockets.
It was a rocketship and more. In
fact, there are not enough adjectives
to describe this kind of power for
this kind of motorcycle, but here are
a few; crazy, unforgiving, relentless,
awesome, scary, phenomenal ... you
get the point! To ride it you have to
be super-fit, super-strong or,
preferably, both.
The other major change was the
frame. The bike has a tendency towant to run a wider line, it doesn’t
want to turn tight like Cairoli’s. It’s
all geometry-related, as Gruebel
pointed out: “Jeffrey has a different
type of frame, we tried different
suspension settings, even the AER
fork. The frame geometry is
different. The front-end and steering
is different. The angle is different
but also the way the front part is
made is different.
“He has a slightly longer
wheelbase as well. Jeffrey likes to
attack the track and stay more on the
outside and be fast there, railing
berms and stuff. Sometimes TonyLooks like titanium, doesn’t it? It is Neken supplies the CNC-machined triple-clampsStock linkage so spring is lighter than for TCThe team went back to scratch for The Bullet He runs a Renthal Twinwall 997 bend handlebarJeffrey likes
to attack the
track and stay
more on the
outside and be
fast there
http://www.adbmag.com.au JANUARY 2018 | 89